Although
the word 'psychology' does not come up in this book, this early work by
Osho shows his deep understanding of the subject and his attempt to
make the connection between meditation and a modern understanding of
psychology that includes the importance that our minds play in
determining and giving direction, on many levels, to our lives.Osho
has taught for many years that meditation is not a religious exercise
but a scientific method to understand what the mind is, and how it
works, and to learn how to create a healthy distance from what is, in
many ways, a programmed and robot-like mechanism that seems to be
dominating our lives and decisions and activities more and more – and
not always in a positive way.As Osho has said so often, beginning
many decades ago - that humanity is afflicted by a deep and fundamental
insanity, and that we initiate each new generation of children into that
madness - is now becoming more and more obvious.The children who
refuse to be initiated into that madness will appear rebellious or mad
to their elders, who persist with the best intentions to force them onto
the same path, to participate in the same madness. "It is utterly
dangerous to be sane in this world," Osho says. "A sane person has to
pay a heavy price for his sanity."Osho pleads in this book for what
he calls an independent mind, independent thinking – and challenges us
to question our belief that we are already great independent minds, a
belief based on the lack of understanding that our thoughts mostly come
from others, like a computer program full of malware downloaded into our
brains.

"What
I mean by the thinking state is that you should have eyes, what I
mean is the ability to think on your own. But I don't mean a crowd of
thoughts. We all have a crowd of thoughts within us, but we don't have
thinking within us. So many thoughts go on moving within us, but the
power of thinking has not been awakened."In his early days of
teaching Osho ran meditation camps in which he introduced people into
meditation, and his morning and evening talks created the framework of
understanding for this work. This book is a fascinating record of one of
these camps – in a short period of three days Osho introduces his
participants to an understanding that our minds are running on malware
programs – and he introduces meditation as an antivirus to clean our
minds of the conditionings and indoctrinations that are preventing us
from realizing our full potential and to be happy."In the coming
three days I will talk to you about the search for life…I must first say
that life is not what we understand it to be. Until this is clear to
us, and we recognize in our hearts that what we think of as life is not
life at all, the search for the true life cannot begin.""When you
have something authentically your own in your mind, you start moving
toward the soul. Then you become worthy, then you are able to know the
soul. Until you have an independent mind, it is simply impossible for
individuality to be born."

After
decades in which women have started to take control of their own lives
and have stepped out of old roles and restrictions to become independent
of men, the focus now turns to men. The question at hand is, “What now
Adam?

Men's liberation has not happened yet. Not only women but
men also need a great liberation movement–liberation from the past, from
the slavery of life-negating values and social conditionings that have
been imposed upon them for thousands of years.

"Man needs a new
psychology to understand himself,“ says Osho, and the basic
understanding that needs to be deeply imbibed and experienced is that no
man is just male and no woman is just female; each man is both man and
woman, and so is each woman - woman and man. Adam has Eve in him, and
Eve has Adam in her. In fact, nobody is just Adam and nobody is just
Eve: we are Adam-Eves. This is one of the greatest insights ever
attained.

But throughout history men have been conditioned to
deny and reject their feminine qualities, to suppress their so-called
"feminine" responses and feelings, and this has been reflected in the
suppression of the female element in the outer world. Unless each man
can start to discover his own inner woman, he is going to be tied up in a
frustrating search for female qualities on the outside, in the outer
woman. Each man needs to reintegrate his feminine qualities in order to
become healthy and whole, complete within himself.

Unless the
individual man starts to come out of his robot-like, mechanical
functioning and unawareness and begins to live his life with self-love,
awareness, and deep respect for his real nature, there seems to be no
chance that our world can escape global suicide.

"Being a man or
being a woman is an accident" says Osho. "Just like being a German or an
Indian is an accident, being black or white is an accident – all of
these things are not
our choices - but you are lost in the accidents! You are too worried
about them, your whole time and energy is wasted in them, and you
become so occupied with the non-essential that the essential is
forgotten."

The essential for Osho is what he calls the being –
simply the being – which is not accidental, but is destined. Rather than
trying to figure out what it is to be a man, Osho suggests to find
“that which is absolutely destined. That is your nature, that is your
essence.”

In his playful and insightful way Osho looks at all of
the different facets of the varying roles men play, showing how these
qualities have shaped and influenced society. He shows how energies that
are so often channeled into aggression and negativity can be
transformed into creativity and personal evolution, and provides
meditative techniques as a practical aid to moving through this process.

The
book functions as a mirror, using common archetypes to structure the
wealth of material that is available from Osho on the subject of Men's
Liberation. These archetypes - Adam, The Robot, The Beggar, The Lover,
The Politician, The Gambler, The Creator, and so on - should not be
understood as fixed types of character or personality but simply useful
descriptions of certain tendencies, conditionings, and trained behavior
patterns of the personality, common to all of us.

As Osho
indicates, our reality lies beyond all these stereotypes and categories.
The archetypal concepts are used to help us recognize our particular
mind-sets and then move beyond the mind’s limitations and confinements.
To go beyond the personality and discover the original face, the real
and essential self.

Mystics
don't usually write books; they speak and work directly with people in a
transformational way. Life Is a Soap Bubble is among the few written
statements available from enlightened masters or mystics. Lao Tzu's
statements of the Tao Te Ching came into being only at the end of his
life. In the same way, Osho's books are transcriptions of his daily
talks. This book is a precious collection of 100 letters written by Osho
and mailed to a Yoga Sohan at her meditation camp. Osho promised her
that he would send her a letter every day and that she should keep them
so they could be published one day. This collection of thoughts provides
an essential road map to those who feel that there must be something
more to life and are ready to explore other dimensions of being. These
short passages are full of diverse, pertinent gems that will touch the
heart.